All-Night Day Care : Children: Santa Ana center provides 24-hour-a-day service for parents working--or partying--the late shift. It’s the last resort for many of them.

Midnight traffic zoomed past the Children’s Center on North Bristol Street, sending stripes of light and emergency wails into the darkened front room.

Oblivious, four small forms slept on child-sized cots. In pajamas, a 2-year-old hugged a bottle, a 4-year-old, a worn teddy bear. A 5-year-old still in her day clothes lay curled up in another room beneath a flickering television, in hopes her mother would arrive any minute.

It was an average group Tuesday night at the Children’s Center in Santa Ana, the only 24-hour child care center in the county.

For the past 10 years, its staff has watched over hundreds of children of daytime working parents as well as those who need or want to be out at night: police officers, taxi drivers, chefs, hospital and postal workers, revelers, exotic dancers and call girls. Tuesday midnight, two parents were still working, one had gone out for a drink after work and another was dancing.

Because other parents choose relatives or baby sitters to watch their children at home, state licensing officials call nighttime centers the choice of last resort.

But parents like Janet Swenson, 29, who works days as a secretary and nights as a waitress, can’t believe their luck at finding a place that not only will stay open past 6 p.m., but will also watch their children day or night, seven days a week, breakfast and dinner included.

Once registered, parents can drop off their children without reservations. They are charged by the hour, starting at $1.30 for 4- to 6-year-olds who come full time and up to $2.30 for 2-year-olds who come less than 20 hours a week.

Her night job finished, Swenson arrived at the center just after midnight. She roused her son Lindon, 4, who grabbed his bear, rubbed his eyes and slumped on her shoulder to be carried out to the car and home to Redondo Beach.

If the center didn’t exist, Swenson said, “I don’t know what I’d do. I really don’t.”

Russell Parks, a Santa Ana computer programmer who brings his daughter, Jessica, 2, to the center days and some weekends, said: “You can’t get a sitter to do it as cheap as these guys.”

Another client, Bruce Adams, whose daughter Sylvia, 4, attends the center while he and his wife work double and split shifts at a utility company, said, “We think they’re more reliable than family.”

Owner Paulette Smith said she decided to open the center nights and weekends mainly to make ends meet and possibly earn a profit, a goal that has eluded her nearly every year.

Currently, the center, like several other private centers for preschool-age children in North Orange County, serves fewer than the 40 children between the ages of 2 and 6 for which it is licensed.

Amiably cluttered, the converted 1940 home is clean but run-down. It sits on a busy street in a neighborhood where people bar their windows and homeless mothers beg for lodging. On New Year’s Eve, rounds of semiautomatic gunfire can be heard from the gravel parking lot where the children celebrate with little hats and blowers at midnight, staff members said.

But Smith said the location has never caused any problems, other than a single drunk using the lawn for a bed. Reluctantly, she called the police.

A mother of six, including a foster child, and a regular churchgoer, Smith approaches the realities of modern life with tolerance. It’s an attitude that can be taxed by the nature of 24-hour child care.

Pam Bell, night manager for the past five years, has refused on several occasions to allow intoxicated parents to take their children home in the wee hours.

“I don’t argue with drunks. That’s not my policy,” said Bell, who once called the police who eventually drove home a belligerent and intoxicated mother.

After a second incident, Bell said, she expelled the woman and her child; Smith let them back in.

A few parents also have left their children for days on end without contacting the center.

In one case, teachers trying to reach the mother at work were told she had taken a trip to Dallas. The teachers reported the case as child abuse and found that Child Protective Services had already been notified. The story ended when she married a man on the East Coast and took the child with her, Smith said.

One year, several moms from the now-closed Mustang Club, a topless bar in Santa Ana, brought their children to the center, Smith said. Smith said she doesn’t care what sort of work parents do, as long as they are responsible and leave a number for emergencies. Like any working parent, the strippers and call girls, when notified, would leave work to pick up a sick child or send someone, she said.

Amid a shifting and unpredictable number of children hour to hour, and day to day, the center sticks to its nightly routine: dinner at 6, a snack, TV until 9 and then lights out.

Tuesday night, the children lay on cots watching an Easter special on the Disney Channel. When Smith called for lights out, she was challenged by 5-year-old Lakeisha Johnson.

“How come?” asked Lakeisha.

“That’s the rules.”

“How come we have to go to sleep?” the child persisted.

“Pretty soon your mom will be here,” Smith said, changing the subject.

“How do you know?”

“She usually is,” Smith said, gently changing the subject again. “Would you like me to rub your back?”

“Yes,” came the answer from the dark.

Most evenings, their lullabies are television, traffic and the hum of an electrical sign.

Bell likes to leave the TV on even after the children are sleeping so they don’t hear the sirens on Bristol Street. “TV is like a security blanket.”

She keeps it on all night while she stays up doing paper work for Smith.

The center has been profitable only in years when government subsidy programs are operating, Smith said. She resists raising prices. “We have so many parents who are barely making it now,” she said.

She is unsure how long she will be able to run the center at a loss.

Meanwhile, the children dribble in steadily around the clock. By 2:45 a.m., the last child of the night had been picked up. Two hours later, the first child of the next day was signed in before dawn.

Under fading stars, the parents who work early shifts began dropping off their children. One, still sleepy, was put on a canvas cot. Another happily attacked the toy bucket underneath the TV now broadcasting the morning news.

The swish of traffic on Bristol was starting over.